The Cart Before The Horse

126 persons were killed in Jammu & Kashmir between May 1 and May 26, inthe run-up to and during the two-day Round Table Conference chaired by PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh, despite the fact that the state capital and venue ofthe Conference, Srinagar, was locked down under a security blanket and curbs onmovement that were extraordinary even for this terror ravaged state. The deadincluded 69 civilians and 11 Security Force (SF) personnel. April had witnessed91 fatalities (37 civilians and 16 SF), while March accounted for 70 dead (14civilians and 13 SF).

May has, of course, been a month of consistently high fatalities each year,marking the melting of snows over the state’s high passes. Nevertheless, thefocused fury unleashed on Srinagar – where an unstable ‘normalcy’ has beenin evidence for some time now, resulting in a flood of summer tourists – wasclearly linked to the Conference and the ‘message’ that Pakistan-backedjehadis and their front organizations in Srinagar wished to communicate. Thisfury peaked in the final few days culminating in the Conference with a spate ofincidents that brought exceptional pressure to bear on the harried SFs, andeventually led to the Prime Minister’s decision to cut his visit short. Themost significant of these incidents included:

May 25: Four tourists – two children and two teenagers – fromGujarat were killed and six others injured when terrorists hurled a grenade at atourist bus at Botapora near Hazratbal on the outskirts of Srinagar.

May 24: At least 11 persons, including three Central Reserve PoliceForce (CRPF) personnel, were injured at Qamarwari in Srinagar, when terroristslobbed a grenade at a CRPF picket. The Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) claimedresponsibility for the attack. In a second attack in Srinagar, two civilians anda CRPF soldier were injured in a bomb blast at Sarafkadal. In a third incident,at Zadibal, terrorists targeted a police station, wounding four police personneland six civilians.

May 23: A few hours ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s arrivalin the Kashmir Valley, a suicide bomber blew himself up as a patrol party of theBorder Security Force passed Hyderpora colony near the Srinagar Airport,injuring at least 25 BSF personnel. The Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) claimedresponsibility for the attack.

May 22: Thirty-four persons, including 23 civilians, were injured inseparate grenade attacks in Srinagar. In the first incident, terrorists hurled agrenade on a Police Gypsy at Chatipadshahi-Rainawari, injuring 13 civilians andfive police personnel. Another grenade attack was carried out on a Police Gypsyat Barbarshah. Six civilians and two police persons were injured in the attack.A separate grenade attack by the terrorists at Fatah-Kadal injured four CentralReserve Police Force personnel and an equal number of civilians. The Jaish-e-Mohammed(JeM) claimed responsibility for these attacks.

May 21: Two terrorists in police uniform attacked a rally of the YouthCongress at Sher-e-Kashmir Park in Srinagar, killing three political activistsand two police personnel minutes before the scheduled arrival of Chief MinisterGhulam Nabi Azad. Inspector General of Police (Kashmir), K. Rajendra Kumar, wasamong 25 persons injured in the attack, which was claimed by the LeT and Al-Mansoorian.The two terrorists were subsequently killed in the exchange of fire.

It cannot be unreasonable to inquire whether there areat least some avoidable deficiencies in a ‘peace process’ that so escalatesviolence, destabilizes established equations, provokes a dramatic hardening ofpositions, pushes areas of relative peace into sudden carnage, raises politicaltempers and polarizes political constituencies. Such an inquiry becomes the moresignificant in view of the fact that the process failed to secure theparticipation of any of the groups that appeared to have been projected as itsprinciple target – the various factions of the Hurriyat; that created solittle that is new in terms of options or avenues of resolution; and that hasalready irritated at least some of the participants in the Conference intostrong dissent.

A faction of Panun Kashmir, the organization representing the displaced andlong-neglected Kashmiri Pandits, and which participated in the Conference, hasalready voiced strong objections to the Prime Minister’s creation of a WorkingGroup to look into the issue of greater autonomy for the state. The PrimeMinister did not, in fact, use the expression ‘autonomy’, but referred,rather, to "effective devolution of powers among different regions to meetregional, sub-regional and ethnic aspirations". Panun Kashmir’s GeneralSecretary, Ramesh Manvati, nevertheless, saw fit to declare, "We are stronglyopposed to grant of autonomy to J&K. We wonder whether the Prime Minister’sannouncement amounts to negating the 1994 Parliament resolution that the entireundivided state belongs to India." He argued further that the state alreadyenjoyed enough autonomy, and there was need to integrate it with the Union morestrongly, so that Indian Constitutional guarantees ‘flowed freely in the State’.

In their rejection of the ‘autonomy’ issue, though for diametricallyopposite reasons, Panun Kashmir was one with the ‘moderate’ Hurriyat. TheChairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), Mirwaiz Umer Farooq,declared, "We will not be part of the dialogue wherein internal autonomy willbe discussed, which is a futile exercise", and further, "Hurriyat want toclarify that the Kashmir issue is a trilateral problem involving India, Pakistanand people of Jammu and Kashmir."

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Chairman of the more radical Tehrik-e-Hurriyat (TeH)faction, rejected the Prime Minister’s efforts to focus on issues of currentrelief to the people of J&K, similarly echoing the Pakistani position: "First,resolve the core issue, then talk about development. Decide the destination,then everything can follow."

Further down the extremist spectrum, the United Jehad Council (UJC) – basedat Muzaffarabad in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir – rejected the Round Table as a‘futile exercise’, with its Chairman, Syed Salahuddin of theHizb-ul-Mujahiddeen, declaring that the ‘struggle’ would continue ‘untilthe entire region secedes from India’: ""No other solution is acceptableto us… Militants will continue their struggle until they get freedom fromIndia."

The occasional dissident voice, however, cannot be theonly measure of the success or failure of the Conference. But even its strongestadvocates would need to be modest regarding the achievements of the SrinagarRound Table, which, in sum, amount to the participation of the Prime Ministerand a small group (eventually, according to reports, just 30 of the 41invitees), and the determination to set up five ‘working groups’ to lookinto a number of issues that have already been looked into several times before,and that, in substantial measure, tend to pre-decide several issues (such as,for instance, ‘autonomy’) that need far greater consultation and consensusbefore they can be accorded any priority in the processes of resolution.

The chief cause of problems, it has been remarked in another context, issolutions; this applies substantially to the current peace process, and to thecircumstances and content of the Second Round Table at Srinagar. For one thing,by announcing its dates well in advance, and without any consensus onparticipation, the Round Table created the context of enormous politicalposturing and stridency, particularly among the extremist overground leadership.The arbitrary inclusion and exclusion of particular groups and participants, andthe last minute hustling to force some sort of credible quorum for a meetingheaded by the Prime Minister can only qualify as cause for embarrassment, andthe location in Srinagar points to another organizational miscalculation,presenting the terrorists and their Pakistani handlers with a readymade andwidely publicized platform for their ‘propaganda of the deed’.

It is not possible, here, to itemize each of the manydeficiencies in the current process, but some of the more glaring anomalies arereflected in elements of the Prime Minister’s own speeches. To take anexample, he referred to "two dimensions to the problems of Jammu & Kashmir– one being the relationship between Delhi and Srinagar and the other beingthe relationship between Delhi and Islamabad." In this, the Prime Ministergives credence to a distortion that Pakistan has consistently promoted (it isuseful to notice how closely this echoes the statement of the APHC Chairman, andthe sentiments of the TeH Chairman), and that militates against some of his ownearlier observations.

On June 11, 2005, at Leh, the Prime Minister had noted that "Baltistan isunder the occupation of foreign troops". The people of the Gilgit-Baltistanregion are denied all political rights and a constitutional status, and havebeen subjected to systematic state-backed pogroms and experiments in demographicre-engineering. The Pakistan Administered ‘Azad Jammu & Kashmir’ region,which has, at best, a nominally ‘democratic’ system with no devolution ofpower, and qualified political ‘rights’ that are essentially a contemptuoushand-out from Islamabad than any real measure of freedom or autonomy.

These are certainly another ‘two dimensions’ that continue to beneglected among the ‘problems of Jammu & Kashmir’, and no solution thatignores these long disregarded and oppressed constituencies can have any currentlegitimacy or lasting merit. The grievances of the people of Jammu and of theLadakh region have also been pushed out of view by the exclusive focus on theValley. By declaring his intention of "building a new Kashmir in Jammu &Kashmir" the Prime Minister can only have rubbed salt into the wounds of thepeople of these diverse regions.

The problem is that specifics have been allowed todominate the peace process long before the general principles of resolution havebeen settled. Unfortunately, unless specific proposals are articulated withinthe context of consensual general principles, what we have is not elements of asolution, but rather the roots of new complexities, the beginnings of newproblems.

This point was driven home by delegates drawn from every major region of thewider pre-1947 Jammu & Kashmir state – including Gilgit-Baltistan, ‘Azad’Jammu & Kashmir, and the Leh-Ladakh region – in another, relativelylow-profile Conference held at Manesar near Delhi on May 18 and 19, under theaegis of the Institute for Conflict Management (ICM), just days before theSrinagar Round Table. The unanimously passed Resolutions of the ICM Conferencerejected a wide range of elements that are currently embedded in the discourseon the ‘Kashmir issue’, including the role of violence and terrorism,isolationism, communal, ethnic or regional exclusionism and ghettoisation aselements of, or pressures towards, a ‘solution’; they rejected, equally, anyresolution based on "a mere political redistribution of power between regionalor factional elites". This Conference sought, instead, a just,non-discriminatory and integrative solution based on democratic norms, clearrepresentation of all constituencies in the region, and the protection of allcivil and political rights within the framework of a Constitutional Democracy.

Regrettably, the high-profile Round Table at Srinagar has given credence,authority and legitimacy to elements of an agenda and perspective that has longbeen dictated by terrorist groups and their front organizations at the behest oftheir Pakistani handlers, reinforcing a ‘Valley-centric’ approach that hasbeen an essential part of the problem, rather than any part of a potentialsolution. The sooner the peace discourse on J&K can break through thisconceptual logjam, the closer will it come to a constructive approach that canyield a credible and lasting solution.

Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for ConflictManagement. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) of the SouthAsia Terrorism Portal